Bad Boy's Cinderella: A Sports Romance (6 page)

He pulled back and looked at me and I couldn’t stop heaving breaths, amped up on arousal, adrenaline pumping through me at the way he was drinking me in.

Then he placed a hand against the rounded softness of my stomach and dragged up to the valley of my breasts, thumbed the cup of my bra down to expose a hardened nipple and brushed over it. “Jesus Christ,” he said, and I’d never heard such obvious, unguarded appreciation and desire breathed into two small words before and I whimpered, arched my body into his touch, nearly cried out when he seized my mouth in another bruising kiss and squeezed my breast, thumbing my nipple.

Heat spiraled through me from my nipple to my groin, tiny bolts of electricity sparking my nerves and making me desperate. I clawed at his back, his shoulders, around the front to the lapels of his jacket and shoved it off him. He let it fall to the floor and then he pulled down my bra cups, palmed the generous handfuls of my breasts, and he was kissing me hard, and I was shaking, and I could taste his lust for me in the back of my throat, making me whine, high and needy.

His next move stole my breath, punched it out of me in one fell swoop as he pulled away abruptly and looked at me with eyes darkened, pupils blown wide, his lips flushed and slick and his chest heaving. And then he dropped to his knees and my legs weakened, threatened to spill me at his feet, my mind spinning and hands shaking, and he was lifting my thigh and placing it on his shoulder, and I couldn’t think, could barely see, my vision lust-hazy and narrow as red-hot anticipation crashed over me in waves.

He said something, I didn’t know what—could barely make out sounds through the white noise in my ears as I scrabbled at the wall behind me—and then buried his face against my crotch, breathed me in, rubbed his nose and mouth along the damp material of my underwear and then hooked his fingers in the edge, pulled it aside, exposing my wet pussy for his view.

I only had a second or two to try to regain control of myself before he used two fingers to part my folds and went in with his tongue, and I could do nothing but fist a hand in his hair and hold on for dear life, shocks of pleasure racing up my spine and liquid heat spreading through my groin as he flicked his tongue against my clit and rubbed a finger down the center of me, circling my entrance, teasing and light.

I lifted my butt away from the wall to push my sex against his face, holding him still by the hair and feeling him groan against me, his finger slipping inside my tight channel, and I was grinding against his face, chasing the orgasm licking the edges of me, burning up from the inside as he put more pressure on my clit and added another finger to thrust in and out of me, and that was it, I was done, and all I was able to do was hold on tight as my body convulsed and stars exploded in my vision and my toes curled right up.

I zoned out of what happened next, vaguely aware of being picked up and carried, and when I came to I was on a bed and he was standing nearby, looking at me as he stripped off his clothes.

“You back with me?” he asked, and I nearly said no, not entirely sure I was awake right now. But instead I licked my lips and held out a shaky hand for him and he took it, put a knee on the bed to come nearer, lifted my hand and brought it to his mouth. Kissed my palm and my fingertips and said, “You taste amazing.”

I gave a tired laugh, my mind drifting pleasantly, unable to respond.

He kissed my hand again before letting me go, stepped back to continue removing his clothes. “You should’ve seen it from my view,” he said, but I was barely paying attention to his words. I was too distracted by the sight of each golden inch of skin he was revealing to me, as he shrugged off his shirt and unbuckled his belt, peeled open his pants and let them fall. He stood before me in a pair of boxer briefs, looking like every orgasmic dream I’d ever had, and a rolling wave of pure desire washed through me anew.

“We’re not done,” I said, and his eyes glittered darkly.

“Not even close.”

Then he pushed down his boxers, exposing his thick, hard, beautiful cock, slightly damp at the tip. He already had a condom out on the dresser and he grabbed it, tore it open, flicked his gaze back over to me.

“Strip,” he said, and I swallowed, rushing to comply.

My dress was hanging off one arm, so it took me only a few moments to strip naked and push everything to the floor. When I was finished, he had the condom rolled on and he was on the bed, crawling towards me, his expression predatory and his chest flushed.

I welcomed him in, opened my legs in invitation, felt the dampness there from my orgasm and the tingle spreading through my groin.

He smiled as he settled over me, dipped in to kiss me and whispered in my ear how beautiful I looked, pressed his lips to my cheekbone and my jaw, throat and breast, the hardness of his sheathed cock pushing against my aching pussy, making me needy and desperate.

I whispered a plea to him, or something like it, the words lost in his mouth in the moments before he lifted his hips, lining himself up, sinking inside me, and we both groaned, deep and stuttered.

He paused there a while, letting me adjust, kissing me softly and running his hand through my hair, the feel of him pulsing inside me, making shocks of pleasure radiate through my groin.

Then he was moving, and I lifted to meet him, and between us we found a rhythm that had us both gasping and holding on, his eyes dark with pleasure and locked on mine, his forehead glistening, the muscles rolling in his shoulders as he moved quicker, thrust harder, knocked the breath out of me until all I could do was hold him tight and let my body tumble over the edge into oblivion. My mouth opened in a silent scream, and distantly I was aware of his groan as he reached his own climax and then he was collapsing on me, and I was trying to find my breath, and the room was spinning around me but I didn’t care.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this good and I didn’t want to let him go, to bring it to an end. And fortunately for me he was on the same page, because the only time he left me in the hour that followed was to get another condom, and when I finally fell asleep, I did so curled against his side, with his arm around me, my head on his chest, the sound of his heartbeat lulling me into peace.

I
t was
the scent of coffee that roused me. I smiled in my semi-awake state, stretched out my whole body, then pulled myself out of bed and immediately panicked when I realized I was still very naked. Because I’d had sex last night. With Reade. Right here in this bed.

The inside of my thighs tingled at the sense memory of it, and I was briefly distracted from my extreme nakedness by images flashing through my mind, reminders of the heights he’d taken me to last night.

But he was up, making coffee, and any moment he would slip back into the bedroom and catch me naked. Which was not necessarily a bad thing. But this was the morning me, not the sexy made up me, so I convinced myself I had to get up.

The only thing I had with me was the sexy navy blue dress, which was the last thing I wanted to pull back on. But his shirt was lying on a chair beside the door… Was I cliché enough to wear it?

Two minutes later, padding out of the bedroom, the answer was yes. The shirt barely skimmed my thighs and I had to hold it shut over my sizable breasts, but I wasn’t completely naked anymore and that was improvement enough.

His house was surprisingly easy to navigate, mostly open plan and minimalistic. I didn’t get a chance to look at it last night, missed the massive art on the walls, the enormous bookcases, the TV big enough to pass as a movie theater screen. Everything about this place screamed big and wealth and extravagance, and there was a part of me that enjoyed it, a frisson of excitement coiling in my gut at the prospect of being able to experience this much luxury as I got to know Reade.

I wasn’t in this for the money, and I would’ve spent the night with him even if he lived in my income bracket, but there was no denying that the power of him excited me, his importance in the world. The fact that his name meant something, and his presence commanded respect.

I felt a throb right down low, somewhere near my clit, and I smiled wickedly to myself as I continued my hunt for the man in question.

The kitchen was empty, the coffee pot dripping leisurely. I frowned and headed down the hall, and movement out of the window drew my eye—someone on the driveway. I caught sight of dark hair and broad shoulders and smiled again, deciding to go out and greet him, ask if I could pour him a cup of coffee. Or better.

What happened next was enough to wind me, rip the foundations out from beneath my feet.

The instant I opened the front door, took one step outside, I was assaulted with it—flashing lights, the rush of bodies, demanding voices shouting, “What can you tell us about Reade Len—” and, “—reports of the bribery—” and, “—the NFL investigation, ma’am, do you know—”

It hadn’t been Reade I’d seen through the window. It was one of these paparazzi vultures, and I could hardly catch a breath in the commotion of it, let alone get my brain working enough to act.

A moment later, the group of aggressive reporters closed in on me. Ten of them at least, continuously snapping pictures. And I was wearing a shirt that barely covered the essentials, no underwear beneath…

Shit
.

I gasped and stepped back, only to slam into Reade’s body behind me.

“What the fuck?” he seethed. “Can’t you leave me alone at least in my own home?” His face was beet red with anger.

“Reade, what can you tell us—“ and “Can you give us the name of your visitor here—“

The questions poured over us non-stop, and I almost slid back into the house, when I saw Reade raise his hand and rip one of the reporter’s cameras from his grip. “You ever come near my house again, you mother-fu—“

“Reade, stop it. Right now,” I screamed over the noise. “Please, it’s not worth it.” I don’t know what came over me, and I was sure he’d ignore me, but I caught his eye and I could see a dark cloud lifting. “Come on, Reade. Let’s just get back inside.” My voice was soft, but I could tell he heard me.

It was the last thing I’d expected, but Reade handed the camera to the shocked reporter, turned around, grabbed me by my hand, and pulled us both inside, slamming the door on them, heaving breaths as I stared blankly at the wood and tried to wrap my mind around what had just happened.

His phone rang the minute we stepped in, so he answered it, letting go of my hand and walking away from me. I could hear the brief phrases here and there, and he sounded more than just a little irritated, understandably. “—have everyone meet me in the office, thirty minutes. Jacob’s briefing mentioned Roger Milligan—”

He had a face made for war when he came back to me, but his ear was still glued to the phone as he wrapped up the conversation.

“No, I don’t know,” he said in biting tones. “Thirty minutes.” Then he snapped the phone shut and looked at me. “What were you doing?” His gaze travelled the length of me, and I saw something bordering on irritation. My heart sank down to my stomach, settling heavy. “Why did you go out there?Jesus Christ.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, well, now they all have pictures of you stumbling out of my house looking like that—” His voice was cold and annoyed and I had the feeling of being dunked very swiftly in ice-cold water. My mind was spinning, my gut churning, and when I opened my mouth to retort, he held a hand up to cut me off as his phone rang again.

“Jeff, talk to me. Where’s Milligan?”

I’d never been so soundly dismissed by a man before, and it left me reeling, blinking at him in numb shock. Was this really the same man who’d taken me apart so beautifully just last night?

“Kylie,” he said, when his call ended moments later. “I’m sorry.” He approached me, hands raised, and I stepped back. “I’m sorry, okay? This is all just… This shit happening—”

“Don’t patronize me, Reade.”

He drew in a deep breath, visibly retreating and realizing he’d been too short with me. “I’m sorry,” he said again, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. His attention was too focused on whatever disaster he was facing, and I was an afterthought, a distraction he didn’t need. Which he confirmed immediately by saying, “I arranged for an Uber to pick you up from the back entrance. He’s there now,” and then returning to his phone.

I watched him for a few seconds, his agitated talking, the sharp gestures of his hand as he snapped at whatever poor employee was on the other end of the line. He was a handsome man, almost devastatingly gorgeous, but right now there wasn’t anything about him that made me want to stay and take this bullshit cold attitude.

“Good luck,” I muttered, before heading back to the bedroom to get changed. He didn’t respond.

The drive home was long and lonely, the majority of it spent stuck in the morning rush for close to an hour. A few short hours ago I’d been warm and content in his arms, feeling cherished and worshipped and everything I’d ever wanted a man to make me feel. I’d felt like this could be
it
for me, that maybe I’d found someone whose arms I would want to sleep in every night for a long time to come.

Now, I wasn’t so sure.

I didn’t blame him for his mood. He was facing a crisis with his team, and I knew I wouldn’t have been Little Miss Sunshine in similar circumstances, either. But that was the problem—my crises would be relatively private, contained. His were so public that he had a gaggle of reporters camped out on his driveway, his phone ringing nonstop, no doubt a dozen PR people working in overdrive to bring the world’s sports media under control.

If Reade Lennox fucked up, any human being in the entire city could learn about it, if they wanted to. And by association, they would know about me, too.

I’d come to terms with it, in an abstract kind of way. Back when it wasn’t really
real
. Now I’d slept with him, and I felt something for him, and I’d been snapped wearing his shirt and nothing else…and I was a part of this now. I didn’t know if I wanted to be.

What I definitely didn’t want to be a part of was a confrontation with Reade’s mother and sister, but as I got out of the car outside my home, another car pulled in beside me, as if it had been waiting for my arrival. And out stepped Georgia Lennox, with a woman who was surely her mother. They looked like the before and after shots of a lifetime of wealth and cosmetic surgery.

“Mrs. Lennox,” I said as they approached me. “Georgia.” I was acutely aware of how scruffy I was, wearing last night’s dress and makeup—and no shoes! I couldn’t get the second shoe from his car so I just left the other shoe at his place—something Mrs. Lennox picked up on immediately, if her scathing look from my feet to my head was anything to go by.

“There’s no guessing where you’ve come from.”

I nodded. “Doesn’t really take a genius to figure out.”

I would’ve regretted my catty tone, but I didn’t have the energy. I was still reeling from the abrupt ending of my perfect night with Reade, and all I’d wanted to do was take a long bath and wallow in misery for a while. Instead I was in some kind of polite standoff with his mother, while his sister hovered a few feet away, looking at me with disgust.

“We need to come inside and have a little chat,” Mrs. Lennox said, glancing around as if she thought she was a spy on some kind of top secret mission.

“Can it wait?”

“No.”

“Fine.”

I let them into my apartment, keeping my fingers crossed that Jazz wasn’t doing anything inappropriate. But the place was empty, so I led them into the living room and opened the blinds, turned to find them standing in the middle of the room with their purses clutched to them, looking for all the world like two people terrified of contamination.

“Can I get you a coffee, or…?”

Mrs. Lennox looked up from the half-eaten sandwich Jazz had left on the side table. “Sit down, Ms. Weatherby.”

“Kylie’s fine,” I said, but got no response.

They sat on the couch while I perched on the edge of the armchair, and Mrs. Lennox did not beat around the bush.

“We’re aware of the pictures,” she said bluntly. “Of you coming out of Reade’s home this morning. In next to nothing.”

I blinked at her, my mind running entirely blank. “But that was…less than two hours ago. How—”

“We have connections, Ms. Weatherby. Highly influential ones.”

“Uh-huh.” Of course they did. I didn’t know why I’d even questioned it.

“Fortunately for Reade, we’ve been able to issue a block on those pictures.”

“Fortunately?” I said, feeling my hackles rise.

I knew what Mrs. Lennox was thinking—it was clear on both her and her daughter’s faces—but I didn’t expect her to express it so plainly, so I was struck dumb by it when Mrs. Lennox opened her mouth and said with an entire lack of emotion, “Your presence in our family and in our affairs is an embarrassment.”

Georgia turned her nose up, silently agreeing, but Mrs. Lennox wasn’t quite done yet.

“For one, you’re a daughter of a convict. A man currently serving time.”

It was like the walls were closing in on me, making my chest feel very tight. “For something he barely had any involvement with,” I said. “His term is minimal.”

Mrs. Lennox waved it away with a careless hand. “Nevertheless, we don’t want that sort of thing connected to our family. Especially in light of the current scandal with the team. Reade needs someone respectable, but more than that,” she said, her tone growing colder with each word, “someone who understands our world, and how to behave in it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You wouldn’t find a single eligible young woman in our society who would be stupid enough to leave a man’s house in her underwear.”

It was on the tip of my tongue:
I was in your son’s shirt, actually, with NO underwear on
. But I didn’t think that would go down well. “It was an accident. I thought it was—”

“I don’t care,” Mrs. Lennox said, effectively shutting me up. “Let’s stop playing games, shall we? I can give you what you’re really after.” Then, with her daughter smirking nastily beside her, she reached into her purse and withdrew something that made my stomach turn over with sickening slowness.

“What’s that?” I croaked, though I didn’t need to. Didn’t
want
to. Wanted, in fact, to get up and walk away, slam the door, forget any part of this conversation was happening. That someone would care so much about separating me from Reade, that
this
was an option, lying there on the coffee table, like a neon sign flashing something like the end.

“That, you silly girl,” Mrs. Lennox said, “is ten thousand dollars in cash. And for someone like you, I imagine it’s a highly welcome sight. Your father is penniless now, isn’t he?”

I swallowed, pushed back in the armchair as if distance from the cash would make it disappear. I didn’t even pay any attention to the comment about my father. None of it mattered, not when Reade’s mother was literally trying to pay me to vanish from her son’s life.

“I don’t want that money.”

“Yes you do, and you will take it. And in return, you’ll never see Reade again, leaving him free to find a suitable partner.”

I got up, stepped away, in need of some space to get my brain working again. I felt sick to the stomach, cold all over, something sharp in my chest like my heart splitting open.

“You can’t buy me out of a relationship. That’s not how life works.”

“Relationship?” It was Georgia, this time, who piped up, sneering and icy. “Do you really think a man like my brother could be genuinely interested in…this?” she said, gazing disdainfully around my living room. “In you? You’re a plaything. A brief hobby. When he’s bored of you, he’ll move on.” She smiled nastily, paused a moment before adding, “You’re not the first, you know?”

“No, of course not,” Mrs. Lennox said, her tone brisk and businesslike. “There was that Genevieve a few weeks back. She was annoying.”

“And Carmen. She actually thought she would marry him!”

“Sarah, Isabelle,” Mrs. Lennox said, ticking them off her fingers, “that silly little redhead not long ago… All of them, girls just like you. One date, two, sometimes even weeks and weeks of delusion. Where are they now?” she asked, lifting a hand, as if asking a genuine question she expected me to answer. “Discarded. Every single one of them.”